reap what yo sow...thankfully, knott. Learned when Dan died that the only thing we have on this planet is our life (which is not guarenteed for tomorrow) and the people around us. So take care of the ones around you...whether you agree with each other or knott, we are all we have. Peace and loving the Joy in life when we care about each other. :D lynne

I don't know about much. But think it would be a good idea to take a deep breath when the sheee hits the fan here on Tacoland.

We type words... but we are not always connecting and communicating with the words. So think mayhap we can take a deep breath one more time and not condemn and accuse but discuss and have discourse and listen and learn and maybe even forgive.

Makes life work in a better and much bigger dimension. Peace and more Peace, lynne

When you are working, whether it be typing a document or editing video,
simply hitting ctrl-S (Windows) or Command-S (Mac) will save your work
to disk. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT DOING THIS AT LEAST EVERY FEW MINUTES.

You sir, have heaped a shít-ton of vitriol and petty name-calling upon others on this
forum, so you're knott gonna get much sympathy from me. Of course most if knott
all of people offering support are those who have met you personally; however the
vast majority of us only know you from your posts here.

Philo, feeling the pain out there. Life hurts and sucks at times...been in it and am in it...but life is ...and we need to live it. God, family and friends can help us do it. There is a good life out there for you, no matter what the bad happens. Really ! I know. :)

Can't tell you how many times an unknown ST person has emailed me and lifted my day so I could have a smile and go on. Keep on Dude....we are with you.

Edit: I have never met Philo and don't even know his real name or part of the country he is from. He is human....he hurts...someday each one of us will. Who will be there ?

This will be my last post on SuperTopo. I will explain but please don't bother asking me to reconsider. I have already deleted my photobucket account and asked Chris Mac to permanently delete all my posts. I will be forwarding him this post directly as well.

First I want to say that I have gained a great deal and enjoyed ST for the past 3+ years. I admire many of you very much and have been enriched by your contributions. I have had some tremendous feedback on my essays and cartoons for which I am eternally grateful. I have also received as many kicks in the face as anyone here because of my outspoken political views particularly regarding the Middle East. That is a very intensely personal issue for me and my family. I know of no other STer who lost 5 family members and 6 friends in the war on Gaza as my wife has. Yet even the rhetoric and direct attacks on me were not a problem. I consider that small price to pay for speaking what I believe is the truth . Certainly I am tough enough to with stand any of those slings and arrows. And I would never leave the TacoStand because my feelings were hurt. But this latest episode goes beyond the pale and I am gone.

I am leaving because of a particularly childish stunt perpetrated by Russ Walling.
In his disdain for and distaste of OT threads he posted jpegs so large as to cause several ST folks' MacBooks and IPhones to crash. Then he proceeded to warn every one off of OT threads by threatening more of the same.
Though I fortunately saw Neebees' warning before opening the offending file this threat directly effects me in many ways.
Over the last 5 years I have spent thousands of dollars on computer equipment repair and replacement. In the last 18 months alone I have had 3 laptops crash and take all of my stuff with them. I am talking about all my photos, art, toons, essays and all of my business, everything. I lost further thousands of additional dollars on lost time for data base rebuilding. As well as penalties for delinquency in corporate tax reporting. All of my computer failures were not from your average worms and viruses but from deliberate malicious external attacks. All were top of the line PC systems. Due to this I had recently switched to a Mac as they were considered safer from attack. And I added an external hard drive as well. Still the work involved is far greater than some would imagine. Then I read WARNINGS of a file on a particular OT thread crashing Macs and IPhones. Russ and several others think this was funny. Trust me I was not amused. I just cannot afford to participate in a forum where any given thread may lose my data or shut me down even for a day. As in climbing there should be an inherent trust between participants. This trust, for me at least, has been broken. Russ' lame "stunt' was perceived by me as a threat to my business as any shut down costs me more than I can recover. And a risk to my creative endeavors as I compose directly in a stream of thought process. It is Impractical to bog down my computer by backing up every minute. It was, for me, the equivalent of trundling a rock when there wer climbers below..
Russ' beef was with OT threads and there in lies the rub. They obviously generate a great deal of attention. I can't imagine the multitudes of hits is a bad thing for CMac and ST. As much as many of them are utter tripe a great many OT threads have real value at least to those who participated. Tarbuster got contacted by OT posters with potentially invaluable medical information. I asked for and got important surgical information. Even though she and I have fought like bad children at times LEB came through for me on that one. Often we here on the Taco have shared condolences for our loses and support for our fears. And all on OT threads. What is wrong with that? Do they get out of hand and drift wildly at times? Of course. Do they get petty and ugly at times? Absolutely. And what is wrong with that? Did any one else out there grow up in a family? Did you at times fight likes bad siblings? Did you come back together for support when tragedy struck or the sh#t hit the fan? Anything wrong with that?
Look at the heading of this page. It clearly states...
SuperTopo Climber’s Forum.
Not SuperTopo Climbing Forum.
It was the diversity of this site that I found so appealing and intriguing. The open opportunity to share, banter and argue with a widely diverse group of tremendously interesting folks from all over the world. It was amazing! Ostensibly what Russ is saying by his words and deeds is that since he doesn't like them everyone else should stay away from OT threads. Well who elected him BlogCzar? I can't risk opening up a thread I may be interested in and watching my screen go black. Can any of you? And if fear keeps us away from dialogue, even unpleasant dialogue, isn't that just a pernicious form of censorship?
So Fare Well all. Phil Broscovak

Phil, I'm sure Russ didn't think your life would be ruined and you would lose all your data. Never happened before when a large file gets posted. (I think Russ posted a picture of the Sun...very very large but not full sized) You called the FBI and homeland security, but they weren't interested and now you're pissed. The rest of us back up our stuff regularly. After losing 3 computers you have not learned this yet? I know you cannot respond or your self imposed vow would fall to sh#t, but think that over. Hard drives die. Back your stuff up.

In all this scintillating drama that has unfolded today, I forgot to ask:

Did any of you drama-queens bother trying alt + F4 (Windows) or Command + Option + esc (Mac)
when your RAM-deficient computers had their browsers "freeze"? How long did you wait before
you "threw in the towel?

Large jpg's dont 'crash' computers. They take a ton of random active memory (RAM) to load, in conjunction with an internet connection that gathers said data.

From fixing computers at an amateur level for quite some time, I can tell you that opening large files does cause computers to crash because of this reason:

People.

When the average person loads a huge file, as it is recieving and sending the large amount of data, the computer *locks up* because the CPU usage is closing in on being maxxed out. Just like a climber becoming hypothermic, certain functions are slowed down to a crawl to manage the incoming load of information. What this average person does is a host of CTRL-ALT-Deletes, right-clicks on icons, alt-tabs, and a score of other actions to try to tell the computer to 'do something else.' this only compounds the problem, slowing it more, until the user does the inevitable press-the-power-button-with-all-your-might and loses any unsaved data.

I have a 340 dollar laptop, and Russ' images did not kill this peice of junk. It was unfortunate that it bugged out on you, and that sh!t happens, but keep in mind that if it wasn't Russ that killed your 'pooter, any number of flash-driven websites you inadvertantly try to load in the future will. Best bet? Buy some more RAM, get a decent web connection, and sell your iPhone (C'mon, people actually bought that?)

No one can directly affect your computer without you allowing it. This is a fact. Treat everything you click on like a shotgun-toting dad does with his daughters prom date. Did someone named 'Mike' (do you know a Mike?) REALLy send you an email saying "hey, I just got this great offer!" or is it probably someone trying to phish your account information?

There is nothing in the known universe that can be put into the context of a forum thread post that can affect your computer in the ways you've described. You have to physically click a link to a phishing site or allow a program to start up. If you have even a halfway decent web protection program, it will alert you that a file is about to executed, are you sure you want to continue (i have mine set on uber-nazi settings, so I have to hit "continue" like 3 or 4 times to install the new Java).

What I'm trying to say, philo, is that your safe here, so stick around.

Speaking of cheap computers, I was hoping to use the trusty ol' 1 Ghz Dell Pentium III laptop
with 256 MB of RAM to load that thread, but it appears the "bombs" were deleted, perhaps
due to the imminent FBI raid of Supertopo headquarters. I bet I could have done it!

Easily could have, as long as you don't have ten thousand other things running.

A good check is to (while you have few programs running) go to task manager and see what Processes you have going on. Sometimes the little programs you think are cool and bitchin (like the one that tells you what the weather is in Costa Rica on your sidebar) take anywhere from 6k to 90k of your memory(!!!). Avoid the slowtrain early methinks.

It did cause problems for zip and Russ did apologize. Sometimes jokes backfire. That is life and you move on.

Hopefully some folks will realize what a rough situation that Philo is dealing with and cut him some slack. Who wouldn't get a little bent and have a hard time understanding a joke if they were facing having their leg amputated. That is some heavy sh#t.

Hey Philo, don't leave. How about getting a cheapy computer to surf the taco with? I bet someone here has one they would give you or sell to you cheap. What do you say?

I certainly hope everything works out as far as your leg goes.
That is serious and I know it weighs on you. Old injuries have a way of coming back around the mountain that way.

We are here for you as you come lurking through from time to time.

The 12 step program for ST posters will be hell, just remember, one day at a time...meeting makers make it, and stuff like that.

Phil came through for the Cosmic Banditos when we were in a tight spot for wheels on our RMNP reunion tour. We were just out of money for extras and a 3 week car rental would have taken more than all the fun money we had.

The old dirtbag brought us in out of the cold with some reliable wheels of his own and saved the day. There was gas and mead money on our expidition because of Phil.

His name is chiseled on the Bandito sacred stone tablets.
He is welcome to share my food and drink from the same cup as Survival Instructors like Ouch! say, anytime, anywhere.

Now if only we can do something about that hot running closet Arab blood of his.......

Phil, come back under a new handle if you have to, but then you'll have to guard your text so we won't know it's you.
Damn...................

Check out your open processes. Was it the jpeg that froze your cpu or did it have something to do with your Appleupdater, ipodservices, hpupdater, applemobiledeviceservice, bonour, etc????
Aint all those apple gadgets great??

I called the FBI and they say they never heard of Philo. I found that surprising given his rabid pro-Palestinian stance and thousands of anti-Israel posts, and Philos description of being harassed by Israeli secret service people on more than one occasion - but maybe we have the FBI and the Israeli lobby all wrong. He must have called in and they declined to investigate any alleged "Fish thread bomb" wherein a large file was posted to a piece of sh#t no-climbing thread causing Philo to lose his work cause he didn't save his work and has a slow computer. I had successfully posted to that thread a couple of posts under Russ wondering why Russ didn't make the Sun larger. Didn't effect my POS puter at all but it was slowwwwwww loading fer sure. However, I am running an antique Dell Optiplex that is at least 10 years old that I bought used, has Windows 2000 of course, I had upgraded the memory to 512.

But I have a Revolution 7.0 sound card pushing Klipsch speakers that will rock the neighbors house when cranked and JUST RULE!

*breaking news* ...it wasn't Russ's fault as it turned out, this: like all things Philo has complained about, this too can be laid at George Bushes feet. Turns out that he once vetoed a bill that would have made posting large files illegal.

So it was Bush who is ultimately responsible, I repeat, Bush.
Have a nice day.

that sucks, philo. i always loved your Black Canyon stories, although i think getting off this chossy roadcut of an internet forum will be healthy for you and make you happier. i sincerely wish all the best in your life offline and hope to maybe meet you one day in the Other Ditch.

that said, i'm sorta with Russ on this one. the great posts and trip reports get buried in a massive sea of dreck, mostly a bunch of self-agrandizing "dig me" posts. i used to be able to sort out the cool stuff and bookmark it on del.icio.us but it gets time consuming when you have to sort though a bunch other "look at how smart/witty/politically informed i am on the internets" garbage. hope i don't offend anyone else into ragequitting the taco but it really sucks with all the great content on this site. too bad everyone here is all against splitting the forums.

Just one simple change though. Have a climbing section but have all threads ALSO go to the regular section. The climbing stuff would be in a section of its own, but it would also be posted in the full forum. That way we would have the best of both worlds. Everyone would be together in the full forum, climbing, political, religious, LEB, plus those threads labeled climbing would get put in their own section.

Anytime a climbing thread was posted to in the climbing section, that thread would jump to the head of the climbing section, it would ALSO jump to the head of the full section.

Philo's blowhard FBI Paranoia rant over a pic in an off topic climbing post puts his blowhard Hamas Lovefest/Zionist World Conspiracy in perspective.
Case solved.

As for Zip? Gotta be a troll. It is beyond believability that a fully grown adult could be so stupid as to own computers, surf the internet, use a cell phone, manage their finances, and successfully execute a tax return...and not know how to SAVE their work on a computer??? A four year old child knows this. I'm not buying it.

I missed all the drama, but with this sort of productive result, why not drop a few more nukes and see what crawls out of the Supertopo woodwork?

Hi Philo. Sorry to hear about the possible amputation. Worry and stress over that possibility can make anyone overeact to pranks. Don't become so overloaded with cynicism and despair that you make bad choices.

You've contributed much to this forum---don't quit, you're part of the scene here. If you feel a need to rest from forum contending, please don't be too proud to come back.

You're right, bombing threads affects our unconditional trust. But I'd suggest there IS an absence of malice. Russ hasn't really violated his contract with the universe.

This flap will pass and seem insignificant. The sky isn't really falling in; and God won't give Russ power to make the sun bigger.

Yeah i saw it but whats funny is when people delete several of their posts and add some comment on each line instead of just deleting it.

A fine example of this is dmalloy on the " Lessons Thread"
wow that must take some time.

zip is able to adapt and can learn like all of us from spending time here. he only wanted an explanation and he got it. philo on the other hand said that this didnt affect him but it was all about his last three exspensive computer crashes. WTF? There has to be a lesson somewhere.

If we were all as computer savy or is it snobby as you, none of us would need to post or read here. We'd all be investigating each others stats and loose the point.

Truth said i only kid as i wish i could navigate around this site as much as your able to.

What?! You're telling me the [pussy-wanker] who wrote this thread, is quitting because Russ posted a simple jpeg, not even that big or nasty or imbedded with a virus or something, and it made his comp crash?

What the hell kinda computer is this guy running? You could email an image of that size for f*#k's sake.

He does a lot of techno talk in his copied rant above, but he sure doesn't understand computers if a frickin' photo crashed his machine. What kinda piece of junk is he running, anyway? I thought your Macs were these wonderful crashproof virusproof computers that always worked perfectly.

P.S. WTF is wrong with this thread? I can't even read my own post without scrolling a half-mile to the right. Sheesh.

I am never ceased to be amazed by the amount of people on this site who talk sh#t to, and about people they have never met.

I have had a couple people who have attacked me, that i have never even had a conversation with. I have responded with what i feel is an appropriate response.

I don't come here and intentionally wrong, insult, or lay a hand upon anyone. If it is done to me, i will respond with the level of force that i feel is necessary to defend myself.

I work in a couple of different fields where verbal and physical confrontation are a part of the job. I don't like the negativity associated with this interaction, but i am very good at it, and it pays well.

I come to this site as a positive release to the negative energy that i encounter in other areas of my life.

I deleted my posts, because i really don't like my name associated with that negativity, not because i am a pussy.

When the topic was first posted, i was trying to figure out what happened to my computer and my I phone. I e mailed Russ off site and asked him if he had possibly planted something on that thread that caused my equipment to lock up. I never got a reply.

When the thread started to get more responses, it then became apparent that Russ had done something to the thread that caused my equipment to freeze.

I was pissed, and responded.

I was trying to do my own taxes, and i lost all the information that i was working on. Instead of trying to re input it all, i took the next day off, and paid someone else a couple of hundred bucks to do my taxes.

I then get people on this site that say i am stupid for not backing my stuff up and that my computer is a POS.

I have very limited education, but don't believe that i am stupid. I don't have much knowledge of computers and how they work. Those of you you that do know me, know that i have done very well for myself, without being real smart.

I know my computer is not a POS. It is fairly new, and i think it is a pretty good unit. I still have no idea why it locked up. Maybe there is something wrong with it.

Am I upset with Russ? No, not anymore. From what i can understand, he just loaded a real big file, that my computer was not able to handle. He wasn't trying to cause me or my computer any harm.

I really don't want to continue to dwell or post on this thread anymore, but may have to, to defend myself.

I do like the jesting that can go on all over this forum- what you don't know is that cosmiccm & I have exchanged emails & the ongoing joke is now connected for me to someone with a name, a face and a voice. Cosmic's art, while it has "implied" violence , is cartoonish........and therefore, in my opinion, funny.

You are entirely an unknown quantity to me. Your description of me in the car lacked this cartoonish quality; indeed it seemed to be singularily possible. In the absence of having any knowledge of you, I found the typewritten image created in the post to be singularily disturbing.